DEMOCRACY–FREEDOM

To us, these words mean that our cherished tradition of majority rule must never be compromised. Schemes that take away majority rule have the effect of infringing upon the people’s will.

No rule, law, norm, or regulation should take effect that burdens members of society because “the will of the people” have no authority to take away their own rights. Democracy cannot be used to abolish democracy.

SELF-GOVERNING

The process that encourages the will of the people and promotes self-governing is called “representative democracy.” 

The people vote to elect officers to speak for them regarding laws of the land

Before the union was formed, the original 13 colonies had their own constitutional document to govern the people. The federal constitution was ratified as the official document that has the power to make laws for the whole country, in contrast with local governments.

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

The central government typically is responsible for providing collective services for the benefit of the community as a whole, such as national defense, relations with other countries, public order and safety, and regulating the social and economic system of the country.

The central government oversees finance, commerce, national defense, foreign affairs, and all laws ‘necessary and proper’. The roles of the central government have also expanded over the years to include regulatory oversight and protection of the rights of citizens.

Governments are necessary to maintain law and order. Laws are essential for society to function. The government provides safety and security for its people. Government is responsible for providing infrastructures like building and maintaining roads, and running hospitals and schools.

To ensure a separation of powers, the U.S. Federal Government is made up of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. To ensure the government is effective and citizens’ rights are protected, each branch has its own powers and responsibilities, including working with the other branches.

President

Article II of the Constitution states that the executive branch, with the president as its head, has the power to enforce or carry out the laws of the nation.

In addition to the president, who is the commander in chief of the armed forces and head of state, the executive branch includes the vice president and the Cabinet; the State Department, Defense Department, and 13 other executive departments; and various other federal agencies, commissions, and committees.

Unlike members of Congress, the president and vice president are not elected directly by the people every four years, but through the electoral college system. People vote to select a slate of electors, and each elector pledges to cast his or her vote for the candidate who gets the most votes from the people they represent.

In addition to signing (or vetoing) legislation, the president can influence the country’s laws through various executive actions, including executive orders, presidential memoranda, and proclamations. The executive branch is also responsible for carrying out the nation’s foreign policy and conducting diplomacy with other countries, though the Senate must ratify any treaties with foreign nations.

Congress

According to Article I of the Constitution, the legislative branch (the U.S. Congress) has the primary power to make the country’s laws. This legislative power is divided further into the two chambers, or houses, of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Members of Congress are elected by the people of the United States. While each state gets the same number of senators (two) to represent it, the number of representatives for each state is based on the state’s population.

Therefore, while there are 100 senators, there are 435 elected members of the House, plus an additional six non-voting delegates who represent the District of Columbia as well as Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories.

In order to pass an act of legislation, both houses must pass the same version of a bill by majority vote. Once that happens, the bill goes to the president, who can either sign it into law or reject it using the veto power assigned in the Constitution.

In the case of a regular veto, Congress can override the veto by a two-thirds vote of both houses. Both the veto power and Congress’ ability to override a veto are examples of the system of checks and balances intended by the Constitution to prevent any one branch from gaining too much power.

Judicial

Article III decreed that the nation’s judicial power, to apply and interpret the laws, should be vested in “one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

The Constitution didn’t specify the powers of the Supreme Court or explain how the judicial branch should be organized, and for a time the judiciary took a back seat to the other branches of government.

But that all changed with Marbury v. Madison, an 1803 milestone case that established the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review, by which it determines the constitutionality of executive and legislative acts. Judicial review is another key example of the checks and balances system in action.

Members of the federal judiciary—which includes the Supreme Court, 13 U.S. Courts of Appeals, and 94 federal judicial district courts—are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Federal judges hold their seats until they resign, die, or are removed from office through impeachment by Congress.

 

Government Internal Control

Internal control processes protect governments from fraud, corruption, waste, and abuse. They help governments to measure value for money, assess risk, and ensure compliance with laws, regulations, and policies. Managers are the first responsible for internal control activities.

The most important control activities involve the segregation of duties, proper authorization of transactions and activities, adequate documents and records, physical control over assets and records, and independent checks on performance.

Implied Powers

In addition to the specific powers of each branch that are enumerated in the Constitution, each branch has claimed certain implied powers, many of which can overlap at times. For example, presidents have claimed the exclusive right to make foreign policy, without consultation with Congress.

In turn, Congress has enacted legislation that specifically defines how the law should be administered by the executive branch, while federal courts have interpreted laws in ways that Congress did not intend, drawing accusations of “legislating from the bench.”

The powers granted to Congress by the Constitution expanded greatly after the Supreme Court ruled in the 1819 case McCulloch v. Maryland that the Constitution fails to spell out every power granted to Congress.

That decision made it possible for the federal government to expand dramatically over the next two centuries, and to take on responsibilities that the nation’s founders couldn’t have envisioned. Without McCulloch v. Maryland, Congress wouldn’t have been able to create the New Deal or Social Security in the 1930s or enact legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010.

Since then, the legislative branch has often assumed additional implied powers under the “necessary and proper clause” or “elastic clause” included in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Checks and Balances

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself,” James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers. To ensure that all three branches of government remain in balance, each branch has powers that can be checked by the other two branches. Here are ways that the executive, judiciary, and legislative branches keep one another in line:

Examples:

1)  The president (head of the executive branch) serves as commander in chief of the military forces, but Congress (legislative branch) appropriates funds for the military and votes to declare war. In addition, the Senate must ratify any peace treaties.

2) Congress has the power of the purse, as it controls the money used to fund any executive actions.

3) The president nominates federal officials, but the Senate confirms those nominations.

4) Within the legislative branch, each house of Congress serves as a check on possible abuses of power by the other. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate have to pass a bill in the same form for it to become law.

5) Once Congress has passed a bill, the president has the power to veto that bill. In turn, Congress can override a regular presidential veto by a two-thirds vote of both houses.

6) The Supreme Court and other federal courts (judicial branch) can declare laws or presidential actions unconstitutional, in a process known as judicial review.

7) In turn, the president checks the judiciary through the power of appointment, which can be used to change the direction of the federal courts

8) By passing amendments to the Constitution, Congress can effectively check the decisions of the Supreme Court.

9) Congress can impeach both members of the executive and judicial branches.

LAW OF THE  LAND

The law of the land is the whole body of valid laws, statutory or otherwise, existing and in force in a country or jurisdiction at a particular date. Every valid statute is the “law of the land” with respect to its subject matter.

In Article VI (the “supremacy clause”), three items are listed as the supreme law of the land: the Constitution; laws of the national government (when consistent with the Constitution); and treaties.

Constitution

Fundamental law of the land is called the constitution, It is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state is governed.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any …

The phrase law of the land (Latin lex terrae) is a legal term. It means all of the laws in force within a country or region. … In the United States, the Constitution declares it is the “supreme law of the land.” It is the same as due process of law as justified by the Constitution.

Government Regulations

Regulations are indispensable to the proper function of economies and societies. They create the “rules of the game” for citizens, businesses, governments, and civil society. They underpin markets, protect the rights and safety of citizens and ensure the delivery of public goods and services.

Such regulations can limit pollution, increase worker safety, discourage unfair business practices, and contribute in many other ways to a safer, healthier, more productive, and more equitable society.

Regulatory costs are large but invisible.

As the size and reach of the government have grown dramatically over the last century, so too have concerns about the costs and unintended consequences of regulatory programs. At the end of the nineteenth century, the government accounted for less than ten percent of the U.S. economy. Today, government consumes or directs nearly half of the economy, with direct government spending alone reaching on the order of one-third of the U.S. gross domestic product.⁴ Regulatory costs, while off-budget and less visible, are no less real.⁵

At the federal level alone, there are over 70 federal regulatory agencies, employing hundreds of thousands of people to write and implement regulations.⁶ Every year, they issue about 3,500 new rules, and the regulatory code now is over 168,000 pages long.⁷

Regulations present special issues, problems, and controversies.

In our democracy, citizens express their views at election time by voting for candidates and parties that stand for broad menus of policy positions. Between elections, choices on controversial subjects are made through presidential leadership, voting in Congress, court rulings on specific disputes, and “checks and balances” among the three constitutional branches. For citizens to intelligently hold elected officials accountable, however, policies’ benefits and costs must be visible.

Regulations have the force of law, but Congress usually just sets broad regulatory goals by statute and delegates the power to write and enforce detailed rules to specialized regulatory agencies. This means that Congress gets credit for popular regulatory goals while the often-unpopular rules are blamed on “unelected bureaucrats.” This criticism often comes not only from citizens and businesses but also from the legislators who voted for the regulatory statutes in the first place.

Regulation faces fewer checks and balances.

Spending programs, like regulatory programs, often are authorized with broad aspirational language that everyone can support, like the ‘War on Cancer’ or ‘No Child Left Behind.’ But funds for those programs must be appropriated as well as authorized, and it is there in the budget process that we confront the necessary tradeoffs among competing priorities. In contrast, regulatory programs never really adjust to the reality that our country’s resources are limited. Both types of programs may claim dramatic benefits from eliminating disease, crime, or pollution, but such claims often lack credibility and accountability. We would never allow the spending agencies to collect their own taxes from the public, in whatever amounts they feel they need. Yet regulatory agencies effectively do just that.

While many regulatory costs initially fall on regulated businesses, those costs are necessarily passed on—to consumers in the form of higher prices, to employees in the form of lower wages, and to investors in the form of lower returns on investment. For this reason, regulation can produce not only large social benefits but also large negative effects on prices, wages, business investment, and job opportunities. As mentioned earlier, regulation functions essentially as stealth taxation. The balance is often ignored in political debate—when it is assumed, incorrectly, that regulation is a “free lunch.”

The regulatory challenge.

The regulatory dilemma is this: On the one hand, regulation can be critically important to our welfare. Federal and state regulatory agencies have contributed to great improvements in air and water quality, highway safety, public health, honest commerce, racial and gender equality, and many other central aspects of American life.

On the other hand, regulatory actions often have come at a cost that exceeds their benefits and sometimes actually have been counterproductive.

These failures are abetted by the structure of the regulatory process: regulation operates outside our usual system of checks and balances, where policies are enacted directly by our elected representatives and disciplined by taxing and budgeting. Regulatory agencies have too often fallen short of public expectations and disappointing public trust.

Precisely because of its importance, regulation deserves constructive criticism and earnest efforts at improvement. In the following pages, we attempt to show how regulation can be reformed to achieve its valuable goals more thoroughly, more effectively, and at a lower cost.

Independent Agencies

Independent agencies of the United States federal government are agencies that exist outside the federal executive departments (those headed by a Cabinet secretary) and the Executive Office of the President.^[1]: 6 In a narrower sense, the term refers only to those independent agencies that, while considered part of the executive branch, have regulatory or rulemaking authority and are insulated from presidential control, usually because of the president’s power to dismiss the agency head or a member is limited.

Established through separate statutes passed by the Congress, each respective statutory grant of authority defines the goals the agency must work towards, as well as what substantive areas, if any, over which it may have the power of rulemaking. These agency rules (or regulations), when in force, have the power of federal law.^[

Agencies that Run the Government

 “Federal agency” means any department, independent establishment, Government corporation, or other agency of the executive branch of the Federal Government, including the United States Postal Service, but shall not include the American National Red Cross.

Fifty-five agencies manage the government and fifteen secretaries from the main agencies are members of the president’s cabinet.

Reference(s):

Regulatory Transparency Project